Libraries...

[vash]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

I dated a librarian once as well. With no doubt she was the strangest lady I even knew. She was just different.

oh hell yes!! was she rocking that sexy eye glasses and skirt thing..you know where she takes off her glasses..unties her hair bun....

oh..what were we talking about?

[stevej37]

Originally Posted by Schrup

Funny, I'm the opposite. I was reading an unwieldy novel a couple of years ago when I saw a Kindle commercial. I had considered an ereader a couple years earlier, but they still didn't have the selection or price I desired. I ordered a PaperWhite with backlighting & haven't picked up a real book since.

It is great, I used to buy used books, but the kindle books are usually cheaper. I can read at night without disturbing my wife. I bought a 3G for my disabled Mom & now she can read anything she wants without any internet or trips to the library.

The last time I went to our downtown library, it was packed with homeless people.

Kindle readers are great! I have over a hundred books on mine that I have read and it's easy to carry in your pocket when traveling. The print is easy to read outdoors in full sunshine and no need to change pages..just press the edge..done.

[Holger]

I love libraries, the quiet, the smell.

And I was very happy when I read that the usage of printed books is on the rise again, at least here in Germany and among the younger. Libaries have more visitors again. Some hope for the humans.

[Ferraripete]

great thread. pictures are spectacular.

[93nav]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5Es1flO_2M

[Tervuren]

Sometimes the internet fails to find what you're looking for, books can be great.

Who was the first man to launch into orbit from the 'pad with a mustache grown out and not shaved? I found it easier to figure that one out from books.

Search engines will try to point you awray with that question, as there was a person who accomplished a separate first that had a very prominent mustache. He was the third. Search engines will also make this difficult, as the words Mustache, astronaut, Chris Hadfield, space, and orbit will occur together a lot.

And if you do find the answer, please do not post it, its a fun question to ask people who believe their smartphone can find the answer to everything.

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by JD159

Anyone know where it is?

Trinity College, Dublin.

45+ Of The Most Majestic Libraries In The World | Architecture & Design

[onewhippedpuppy]

I'm old school, I still prefer a paper book or magazine. It just seems like a more tangible experience. Libraries are cool, finding exactly what you are looking for is almost like finding a buried treasure. Also hard to beat the smell and the quiet.

[berettafan]

Love libraries as well. Especially those from the early 80's with the semi industrial look, dark tinted windows, dark brick, acres of carpet and nice cool a/c. those are the places as a kid I most loved.

My mother would take me and turn me loose. I would take forever deciding which fun stuff I was going to check out. I loved everything from kids mystery series (Three Investigators) to books full of big color pictures of the universe. It was better than Toys R Us honestly. Everyone in the library was an equal and socio-economic status mean exactly zero. Just a wonderful place.

[tcar]

Here, the libraries, especially in the winter, are the daytime habitat of men who are homeless by choice.

The 'smell' is medieval.


The burning of the Library at Alexandria was truely a devastating event. Think what must have been there on papayrus scrolls.

[sammyg2]

I am reminded of the man who was asked what plagiarism was. He said: “It is plagiarism when you take something out of a book and use it as your own. If you take it out of several books then it is research.”

That is the difference between an expert and an author.

If it (non-fiction) contains more footnotes than original thoughts or ideas, it's most likely academic garbage.
IMHO of course.

[M.D. Holloway]

True - academics use footnotes like a hack furniture carpenter uses nails - a true furniture carpenter will use dovetails and glue. Good non-fiction authors use references and if they are really good, not many. Book sales are fine but the true measure are citations.

If you ever meet an author, don't ask how many books have been sold, ask how many citations they hold.

[LEAKYSEALS951]

When I go a library, the first thing I seek out is the oldest section of literature they have.

It always amazes me to hold books written over well 100 years ago. To have access to this is humbling. Many of them, even have penciled in markings from their long dead owners/readers. This is especially true in old bed and breakfasts with libraries. A scribbling from a kid on 1893? For me- Amazing!

There is one bed and breakfast, relatively close by, which Erwin Rommel visited pre- WWII to study civil war battlefields in Virginia. Although no books in it's library reference him, he was there, and a lot of the books are school books from the family that grew up there.

Even though a lot of the stuff is obsolete, it is still captivates me. I remember reading literature on shipbuilding from circa 1900. The math was incredible- as they had very complex calculations to determine hull flexion over waves and such.

Ever stuck in a library? Hit the archives!

[rfloz]

Originally Posted by M.D. Holloway

When was the last time you were in one of these places?

Every day. Though not quite so grand.

[varmint]

the town i grew up in had an original carnegie library. wonderful place.

[tcar]

Denver has 8 or 9 Carnegie Libraries. Most are still Libraries.

Colorado got 35 or so, I think.

[Crowbob]

My significant other has a nice room just perfect with really high ceiling. I told her I'd build it out for her with dark bookcases and one of those classic roll-around, almost vertical ladders on rails with brass fittings and stuff.

She said no, thank God.

[petrolhead611]

In the the authorities are closing libraries like they are going out of fashion,;wait a minute,what am I saying, that is what's happening.
My grandfather wrote about 40 books before the war, on law, all destroyed by the Nazis. After the war he used a pseudonym for the few books he then wrote, and had one unfinished when he died aged 88. Actually my dad hunted and hunted and eventually found 1 tatty book dated 1926 by my grandfather, on contract law, but its written in what I think is a High German font and I cannot make head nor tail of it.
Thing about law books, as I know from the 5' high pile my lawyer daughter abandoned at my house when she bought her own flat,is that they become out of date real quick.

[recycled sixtie]

Originally Posted by petrolhead611

In the the authorities are closing libraries like they are going out of fashion,;wait a minute,what am I saying, that is what's happening.
My grandfather wrote about 40 books before the war, on law, all destroyed by the Nazis. After the war he used a pseudonym for the few books he then wrote, and had one unfinished when he died aged 88. Actually my dad hunted and hunted and eventually found 1 tatty book dated 1926 by my grandfather, on contract law, but its written in what I think is a High German font and I cannot make head nor tail of it.
Thing about law books, as I know from the 5' high pile my lawyer daughter abandoned at my house when she bought her own flat,is that they become out of date real quick.

As an aside you have an interesting heritage with a grandfather from Germany. I have a grandmother that was buried in Leeds. I remember looking at the gravestone back in the 1950's. Will have to come over to Leeds one of these days. I also have a pic of a house she lived in on Vinery Road, Leeds.

[Eric 951]